Battlezone
by Nachtsider
Summary: The SWA do Iraq 2002, Rico rediscovers true love, and everyone pretty much has an absolute blast. Featuring Gunslinger Girl fanfiction's first ever male cyborgs and first ever foreign counterpart to the Agency. Can you figure out who Meir really is?
1. Prologue

﻿ Author's notes: This tale, penned by me, Nachtsider, is based on the excellent anime/_manga_ known as 'Gunslinger Girl', which is the brainchild of Yu Aida, and also utilizes the continuity of my previous yarn, 'A Day in the Life of a Gunslinger Girl'. The narrative attempts to explain the following: were the services of extra-normal junior operatives utilized during the recent Gulf War? **Bearing in mind that all original concepts, characters, their distinctive likenesses and related elements featured in this publication are my property and may not be used without my express permission**, enjoy the story, check out the related illustration at my Deviant Art account (nachtsider dot deviantart dot com) if you wish, and feel free to drop this author a line at the relevant electronic mail address (nachtsider at yahoo dot com)!

**BATTLEZONE**

**PROLOGUE: MISSION OVERVIEW**

Social Welfare Agency administrator Lorenzo Baiata sent the following message to the Italian Military Special Forces Command _circa _December 2002:

"The United States-led Coalition is mounting an invasion of Iraq. Their top brass are drawing up plans… Meanwhile, we have been asked to lend a hand, and shall abide by this request. Our fee: the latest in American battlefield technology.

"The teams are ready. Their orders are clear – conduct covert reconnaissance of opposition units, eliminate strategic targets with the aid of precision weaponry, assist in 'locate and retrieve' operations, hunt key enemy personnel and aid in the search for weapons of mass destruction."

**END OF PROLOGUE**


	2. Chapter 1

﻿ **CHAPTER ONE: FIRE FROM THE SKY**

The place, date and time: southeastern Iraq, March 2003, early morning. Dawn was just breaking as three diminutive figures entered the desert landscape of basins, dunes and rock outcroppings that surrounded the city of Basra. A fine-tuned killing machine was at work in the area, and its prey was Saddam Hussein's soldiery.

The trio – Angelica, Claes and Liesel – were clad in the local garb worn by Iraqi children and sported deep, wholesome tans. These disguises, coupled with their fluency in Arabic, enabled them to blend in flawlessly with the local populace and had proven to be invaluable when it came to gathering intelligence.

The team's method of tracking their quarry was simple, devious and highly effective. Posing as a forlorn child seeking to know where her soldier brother's unit was stationed so she could pay one last call on him before he left to combat the Coalition infidels, Liesel successfully obtained information on troop movements and unit positions. Angelica and Claes could not help but grin as they recalled how their sister-in-arms had melted Iraqi soldiers' hearts and loosened their tongues with teary eyes and pitiable, compelling pleas.

Crouching behind a large dune, the extra-normal junior operatives set up their equipment. The first piece was a miniature, olive-green, rubberized spotting scope, and the second piece bore a resemblance to an equally small pair of olive drab, tripod-mounted binoculars attached to a trigger via a coiled length of cable. The latter was a laser designator, used in conjunction with a Global Positioning System to mark enemy targets for destruction by warplane-launched, laser-guided munitions.

"Scanning for targets," announced Liesel over her satellite radio.

Angelica stared through the spotting scope's lens, scanning from left to right across the barren ridgelines that lay ahead. She abruptly stopped her scan upon noticing an Iraqi bunker complex built into the face of some hillsides half a kilometer away. It was cleverly camouflaged, but not cleverly enough to deceive Angelica's enhanced eyesight.

"I've got a fix on a target," she exclaimed.

Claes produced a palmtop computer and began keying information into it. All of their data would be helpful with the reports they would be delivering later to their supervisors back at headquarters.

"Good to go! Laser designator ready," Claes responded.

Claes aimed the designator at the front of a bunker. Liesel picked up the satellite radio and began speaking into it.

"We have two Tornadoes on deck, geared up to rock and ruin," Liesel declared, her ear pressed to the satellite radio.

"Target is marked," said Claes, squeezing the trigger that fired the invisible, infrared laser beam into the enemy bunker's firing slit.

A pair of Royal Air Force Panavia Tornado Interdictor Strike aircraft streaked across the firmament twenty thousand feet above the scene, so high they were well nigh imperceptible. One of the warplanes banked sharply and swooped down, letting loose its ordnance. As the bombs plunged earthwards, their internal computers homed in on the laser signature and their tail fins directed them on their collision courses with the bunker.

The three girls braced themselves, keeping their mouths open to prevent damage to their hearing.

Within several moments, the first bomb hit the target and detonated. More soon followed. Before long, the hillsides were an inferno of fire, smoke, flying earth and hurtling steel. Peering through the spotting scope, Angelica could see scores of figures wearing Iraqi military uniforms swarming out into the open to flee the pulverizing bombardment. The few who succeeded were running in the direction of the dune where she and her comrades were sheltering, and Angelica was quick to point this out.

"Time to finish the flyboys' job," said Claes purposefully.

Liesel nodded her assent. Angelica – eager as always – had already left the concealment of the dune and was scampering towards the enemy.

The girls were each armed with a Heckler and Koch MP7 PDW, and soon began putting these small but deadly weapons to good use. Each time they squeezed their triggers, a 4.6mm bullet exploded through the brain of an Iraqi soldier; the lifeless body would snap back through the arid air and flop onto the sandy ground. Before long, the survivors of the aerial slaughter were survivors no more.

"Hostiles eliminated, exfiltrating area," Liesel reported over the radio as the threesome gathered their gear and seemingly melted away into the desert without a trace, their objective of inflicting maximum casualties on the enemy while receiving no damage in return fulfilled.

This was but the first of many such missions to come. Over the next few days, the team swarmed around Iraqi positions like a pack of wolves. Covertly moving by night in _mufti_, they annihilated the enemy. Ripping, gouging, probing and slicing, they systematically disabled Iraqi lines of communication, destroyed trench lines, attacked command bunkers and even clobbered safe areas in the rear. No position was safe from them.

Few would have known that the efforts of Angelica, Claes and Liesel played no small role in ensuring that Coalition forces were able to take Basra with minimal effort and casualties – the participation of the Social Welfare Agency in the Second Gulf War was a closely guarded secret.

**END OF CHAPTER ONE**


	3. Chapter 2

**CHAPTER TWO: TO THE RESCUE (BEING AN EXCERPT FROM THE JOURNAL OF LIEUTENANT JIM PETERS, UNITED STATES AIR FORCE)**

Sealed in the cockpit of our high-tech McDonnell Douglas F-15E Strike Eagle fighter-bomber, my navigator, Second Lieutenant Jon Nichol, and me, Lieutenant Jim Peters, rocketed through the night sky to a target deep in Iraq. We bounced hard in the turbulence rising from the desert floor. To circumvent radar, we had dropped from ten thousand feet, diving hard for the deck at five hundred-and-twenty miles per hour. Even now, at sixty feet, we wanted to be lower.

Below us was a barren ocean of sand. There was absolutely no cover. We crossed over a major north-south highway teeming with military vehicles, our first real sighting of the enemy. It was a shocker. Down there were several thousand men dedicated to the terminally simple idea of killing us before we could kill them.

As we began our attack run on the Ar Rumaylah airfield, anti-aircraft fire sprayed up at us. Shells burst into puffs of black and white smoke, sending shrapnel out in every direction. It was the first time we had ever been under fire, and it was dreadful.

Ten seconds to go. I checked once more around the cockpit, while Nichol took a last glance at the radar screen. The target was still marked precisely where we wanted it.

Adrenalin flooding, heart pumping… Five seconds. Then, I announced: "Three, two, one... pull!" My thumb jammed hard on the red button to drop the bombs. I felt a huge 'doosh' as the bombs fell away and blasted the target into oblivion. The Eagle lurched upwards as the weight came off.

Now, we had to get out of the range of anti-aircraft fire. I banked the jet through a hard turn to get onto the escape heading. Suddenly, there was a 'whump'. The plane jumped across the blue like a scalded cat. The force of the blast knocked the wind out of me.

"Oh, crap… we've been hit!" I growled.

A surface-to-air missile, with its infrared warhead, had locked onto the heat of our aircraft's engines. Traveling at twice the speed of sound, it had streaked into the Eagle's tail pipe, piercing the heart of the left turbine and knocking the war bird sideways.

"The plane's on fire, sir! We've got to get out of here!" shouted Nichol from the back seat.

I looked up to see a bright orange glow in the rear-view mirrors. An enormous fireball was devouring the back of the Eagle. Already it was halfway along the aircraft's spine, about three feet from Nichol. I stared, transfixed by the swiftness of the fire. Our plane was like a comet, trailing orange flames and long, gray plumes of leaking jet fuel.

In time of war, especially over enemy territory, it can be better to fly on in a burning aircraft, in the hope that the fire will burn itself out. But our luck was gone. We were ablaze from stem to stern. "Prepare to eject," I called out.

Nichol radioed our formation leader and gave our position. "We're ablaze," he reported. "We're baling out."

I yanked the stick back, and the nose of the aircraft came up. I yelled to Nichol, "Do it to it!"

We both pulled hard on the handles between our legs. I shut my eyes tight. Rockets under our seats fired, shooting us up at twenty times the force of gravity.

I remember the feeling of falling, end over end. Once the seat's stabilizing parachute stopped my whirling, the main chute deployed with a jarring crack. I opened my eyes to find myself hanging under the fabric of the parachute, floating down into the deathly silence of enemy territory. As I drifted down, I looked over and saw the Eagle crash. A humungous ball of flame went up, followed by a massive pall of black smoke. After the chaos of the preceding few minutes, the sky around me was icy calm.

Then, the ground came rushing up. I landed with a bang on my rear end, winded by the impact. Nichol touched down about a hundred yards away. I picked up my survival pack and ran over. Blood was streaming down my navigator's face from a gash over his right eye.

A vast stretch of mucky brown plain surrounded us in every direction. I could see red and black smoke curling up like a beacon from the burning Eagle a mile or two away. "Let's make tracks," I finally said. "The guys who shot us down are probably hunting for us."

Before taking flight, we got out our locator beacons to make contact with the search-and-rescue people. I transmitted that we were both down and both alive. We could only pray that someone friendly was receiving those signals.

We swung our packs – filled with water, food, extra clothing and knives – onto our backs, and I told Nichol to take his pistol out and make sure it was loaded. I could see he was still a bit unsteady from the smack on the head, perhaps from having hit the canopy as he ejected. He was also limping badly. His left knee had been damaged, probably on ejection.

Off we set, destroying our route maps as we went – the enemy must be denied anything of intelligence value should something happen to us. The sand was deep and slippery around our boots, treacherous. It was searing hot in our flying gear. Looking back, we saw our tracks – parallel footprints traveling through the sand from the point where we had landed. To me they read: 'enemy fliers this way.'

After an hour or so, we stopped. Each of us had the sensation we were being watched. I could literally feel my neck and scalp prickling. We crouched and tried to move more quietly, quickening our pace. A noise came from off to the right, and we dropped flat on the ground, lying there for what seemed like hours. Finally, we began crawling. I looked back at Nichol. He was obviously in pain. His leg was getting worse.

Then, we heard more noises. Something moved to the south – definitely people. A group of figures appeared on the horizon, advancing towards us.

We lay stock-still. I was hoping against hope: "Maybe they won't see us." Then a volley of shots rang out. The Iraqis were trying to scare us out of hiding, flush us out like game birds. I remained perfectly motionless, my heart hammering. Then I heard a loud shout. They had spotted us.

"Look, sir," Nichol said to me, indicating his gun, "they're going to get us anyway. Shall we go out with a bang?" He was suggesting that we at least make a fight of it.

"No, there's always hope," I replied.

Nichol realized I was right. The odds were very much against us. There were at least twelve of the foe, and they had Kalashnikov assault rifles. So, we looked at each other and, without a word, stood up very slowly, arms raised high in the air.

The whole world exploded around our ears. We dropped to the ground as fast as we could. They charged toward us, screaming their hatred and shooting wildly. Hearts thumping, we tensed ourselves for the kill. This was it… or so we thought.

Through blurry vision, I saw two _burqa_-clad little girls rush into the path of the advancing horde, shielding us from the flying bullets with their bodies. I could hardly believe my eyes – the pair remained unharmed. The Iraqis were as bewildered as Nichol and I – they ceased fire and faltered in their advance, not knowing what to make of the barely credible situation.

Both kids proceeded to draw snub-nosed Colt M4A1 carbines, complete with scopes and laser designators, from beneath their robes. "Your turn's over – now comes ours," said the taller and evidently older of the two to the Iraqis in faultless Arabic. Her pre-adolescent alto voice seemed to smirk as they took aim at our foes. The entire squad of soldiers died to a man in the span of less than five seconds.

"Hillshire, this is Triela. Objective secured," spoke the older girl again – this time in fluent Italian and almost certainly into a microphone cum earpiece – as she and her comrade approached us. "Elsa and I are preparing to move… two passengers on schedule, primary LZ, five minutes." She gave me an apologetic look and said to me in polished English: "Sorry for making it only in the nick of time, guys. We picked up your signals only a very short while back – our receivers went haywire prior to then when one of those darn AWACS aircraft your Navy uses to scramble Iraqi communications flew past us." Flashing me a smile, she continued: "This may sound hackneyed, but I'll say it anyway – we've come to get you out of here."

Triela helped me to my feet, and my mind reeled as I contemplated her. She could not have been more than thirteen years of age, and Elsa looked hardly a day over twelve. I descended even further into the depths of befuddlement upon noticing a fact that would certainly have gone unnoticed had I not been observing the girls very, very closely - they were not Iraqi, but white like us. Their bronzed complexions were undoubtedly the product of tanning. Triela had blue eyes, Elsa's were green, and ever-so-slight traces of blond could be seen in the roots of their dark hair, indicating the use of hair dye. Just who were they?

"This is totally unreal," muttered Nichol as Elsa swung his heavyset frame onto her shoulders with effortless ease. For want of anything better to say, he told her not to pull him by his muffler, for it was one hundred percent virgin wool.

"Whatever the sheep have been doing at night is none of my concern," snapped Elsa. "Let's not waste anymore time and get this show on the road already," she said to her comrade.

"I'll carry you," Triela told me as she hoisted me onto her back with only one hand. "You look totally knackered, and even if you weren't exhausted, I doubt you'd be able to keep up with us on foot."

What followed next was the utter surrealism of riding pig-a-back on diminutive human mounts through the desert, being ferried at a speed that no champion runner could even hope to match. The run culminated in us stopping at a _wadi_ or dry stream bed, Triela and Elsa looking scarcely out of breath. Not two minutes went by before a huge MH-53J Pave Low helicopter carrying the subdued, low-contrast markings of our Air Force's 1st Special Operations Wing swept diagonally through a gap between two dunes and approached us, doing at least 140 knots with its nose only ten feet or so above the ground.

Shortly after the slick's wheels touched gravel nearby, Triela and Elsa had deposited us on board. As soon as they did so, they turned to leave.

"Aren't you coming along?" asked Nichol.

"I wish we could," sighed Triela, looking a little sad, "but we've got a lot of work on our hands. Locating and retrieving downed fliers is but our secondary objective - the main reason we're out here in western Iraq is to report on Scud missile launchers on the move. Can't have them lobbing germ or gas-loaded warheads into neighboring pro-Coalition states, you see."

Nichol and I nodded our understanding. Before the chopper climbed away from the wadi, the both of us locked eyes with our little rescuers and mouthed our gratitude.

Elsa turned away, her face as stony as ever. "Don't bother thanking us," she said in a low monotone. "We don't exist."

"Don't be like that, Elsa," admonished Triela. "You guys are most welcome," she called out to us, waving goodbye. "Stay safe!"

We slumped on the departing Pave Low's vibrating aluminum deck. The slipstream whipped through the two open gun hatches and cooled our flushed faces. We were tired but throbbing with exuberance at being alive and free.

After two crewmen tended to Nichol's wounds and made him as comfortable as possible, my navigator succumbed to his fatigue and was soon snoring loudly. I, however, remained awake. With an aerial chart on my knee, I stared intently at the helicopter's navigation computer. I heard the pilot say, "Sandy, this is Moccasin 05. We're crossing the fence." We were out of Iraq.

In the wake of our adventure in the desert, we attempted to find out more about the superhuman little girls who delivered us from the jaws of death. Nichol has made countless inquiries among his numerous contacts within the American and European intelligence and black-ops circles, but nobody has been able to give us an answer.

One thing is for certain, though. Whoever - or whatever - Triela and Elsa really are, we are eternally in their debt, and wish them nothing but luck in the years that lie ahead.

**END OF CHAPTER TWO**


	4. Chapter 3

**CHAPTER THREE: FULL CIRCLE**

It was the 13th of April 2003. Baghdad had fallen not two weeks ago. The day was drawing to a close, the 14th being only half an hour away. Tomorrow would be the last day of freedom for three of the world's most wanted terrorists hiding in Iraq and the last day of life for numerous others.

One third of this fugitive trio was the notorious Mohammed Zaidan, better known by the alias Abu Abbas. Abbas was the mastermind and leader of the 1985 hijacking of the Italian luxury cruiser _Achille Lauro_, in which prominent American Leon Klinghoffer was brutally executed on Abbas' orders. A Palestinian radical, Abbas demanded the release of fifty comrades detained by Israel.

Abbas and his four henchmen ultimately agreed to surrender in return for safe passage out of Egypt. They turned themselves in to Egyptian authorities and were allowed to flee Egypt in a plane bound for Tunisia. American fighter jets intercepted the plane, forcing it to land in Sicily, but Italian authorities released Abbas, lacking any evidence of his wrongdoing at the time.

Abbas would have been a fool not to seize this opportunity, and he was no fool. He immediately fled Italy to Tunisia, and ultimately to Iraq, where he set up the headquarters of his faction of the Palestinian Liberation Front in Baghdad. Abbas operated his terrorist camp there for years under the auspices of Saddam Hussein.

When proof of Abbas' crimes finally came to light, he was convicted _in absentia_ by the Italian courts, which imposed five life sentences on him. It was a futile gesture, and the whole thing had been a textbook case of 'too little, too late' – until now. Nemesis was closing in on him in the form of two of Italy's avenging angels, this deadly pair comprising Henrietta and Rico.

Prior to this mission, Rico had been involved in taking the Faw oil refining and shipping facility on Iraq's southeastern coast. It was an important first-night target in the war on Baghdad – almost as important as eliminating Saddam Hussein. Capture it early and the next Iraqi government at least had a chance of getting back on its feet. Ignore it, and Saddam might blow up the facility, flooding the nearby Persian Gulf with crude, compromising Iraq's economy and shutting down critical water-desalination plants all along the Arabian Peninsula.

But veined and dotted with pipes, pumps and meters, Faw was also a delicate target, easily damaged by wayward ordnance or sabotage. So, on the first night of the war, when others were trying to destroy Iraqi targets, a small unit of the Social Welfare Agency's operatives was trying to keep one from harm. Large, specially equipped choppers flew dark, low and fast toward the refinery from just over the Kuwaiti border. Dispersing on arrival, the birds simultaneously dropped five separate teams of the deadly hit-kids each at five zones close to the huge complex. Their orders: capture Faw and hold it until relieved by a battalion of Royal Marines.

It was a mission for which they had been training for weeks. The goal was to make sure that the battle took, as Jean put it in the jargon that comes with its own camouflage, 'one cycle of darkness'. This aim was attained with ease, and the mission was an outstanding success, the operatives swiftly capturing the target (sans losses, of course) and holding it until relieved. In the battle to take the complex, among the numerous enemy casualties were a score of Iraqi troops who fell to 7.62mm bullets from Rico's Izhmash SVD Dragunov.

Henrietta, on the other hand, had found herself operating undercover in the heart of Baghdad itself. This was where she and Giuseppe as well as several other fellow teams spent most of the conflict, slipping into back alleys and sewers to eavesdrop on communications, cut fiber-optic cables, target regime leaders and build networks of informants.

On 20 March, Henrietta spotted Saddam and his two sons heading for a bunker. However, bureaucratic delays stifled a target of opportunity. By the time she got the go-ahead to laze the target and fire the first attack of the war, almost two hours had passed. The Tomahawk missiles fanned the place flat, and hostilities were on.

Ten minutes after impact, Giuseppe monitored urgent Iraqi radio traffic asking for emergency medical assistance for someone at ground zero. At first, Henrietta was ecstatic, thinking that Saddam had been blown to kingdom come. But sometime later, the sensation deflated when Saddam appeared on television alive and kicking, urging his populace to resist the Coalition infidels. As it turned out, the two-hour window had permitted him and his sons to make a last-minute change of accommodation.

Henrietta's frustration at missing the biggest fish of them all clearly manifested itself during a brief sortie against Republican Guard positions just outside Baghdad, this skirmish taking place one day before the capital fell. In this episode, she seized a 83mm XM141 Bunker Defeat Munition rocket launcher and began to wage her own war on the enemy. For thirty minutes she ran from blockhouse to blockhouse, blasting each one in turn until sixteen emplacements fell silent and seventy-five of the enemy lay dead, opening a gap for Coalition mechanized infantry to outflank the defenses. This was one incident that Giuseppe was unable to attribute to Henrietta's habit of 'counting the bodies she made for him'.

With the advent of her current assignment, however, Henrietta scattered her anger to the four winds. She instead replaced this emotion with patience, focus and a burning determination not to let another high-priority target slip through her fingers.

Henrietta and Rico were not the only extra-normal junior operatives assigned to this mission of capture. Accompanying them was a sleek, compact lad of about their age, who, unlike the girls with their artificial tans and dyed hair, required little in the way of _mufti _apart from a long, checkered scarf, a gray wool _pakol _and a matching _jibbah _to pose as an Iraqi child and blend into the surroundings. His complexion was naturally olive – the features on his bronzed face sharply angled – and he wore his dark brown, almost black hair in a stiff, military-style brush cut. This boy – Aharon by name – was Hebrew to his ruthless fingertips and was one of the many wards of Childville, a clandestine goverment paramilitary outfit that posed as one of Israel's finest orphanages and was the Jewish state's answer to Italy's Social Welfare Agency.

Although Israel was officially out of the turkey shoot that was the Second Gulf War, Aharon, his brother-in-arms Meir and their respective supervisors Nadia and Kathryn had been clandestinely operating in Iraq ever since the conflict's opening shots were fired. The few Coalition officials aware of Israel's secret involvement kept a discreet quiet, for the elite team were hunting al-Qaeda terrorists – an enemy common to both Israel and its longtime ally, the United States, which was also the Coalition's senior member.

Tenaciously tracking down the masterminds behind al-Qaeda's botched 2002 bombing attack on Israeli tourists at Mombassa in East Africa, the quartet traced their quarry to Abu Abbas' terrorist training camp in Iraq. Indeed, it was thanks to their efforts that the fugitive Abbas' hitherto unknown whereabouts had come to Italy's knowledge – the Social Welfare Agency and Childville had fostered close ties with one another for some years. A discussion between the administrators of both organizations culminated in them agreeing to seize their prey in a joint operation that would take place during the early hours of 14 April 2003.

The three-day period prior to this date saw Henrietta, Rico and Aharon staying indoors at their Baghdad bolthole, meticulously planning and preparing for their assault on a compound of dwellings just outside the city, where Abbas and his cronies were lying low for fear of being rumbled by the occupying Coalition forces. Although Henrietta correctly guessed from the very beginning that Aharon was a blunt and merciless combatant who would willingly kill or die for his organization and country, she found the task of working with him not at all unpleasant. His competence made it easy, and she came to respect his candor, decisiveness and intelligence.

Of Meir she saw neither hide not hair – Aharon's comrade remained at an observation post close to the target area to map its layout and watch the enemy's movements, providing his teammates a wealth of information about both via a steady stream of coded radio transmissions. Apart from remarks that Meir was of European origin and 'nice and friendly, occasionally overly so', Aharon spoke nothing of his comrade. Knowing that a meeting with Meir was inevitable, Henrietta's inquisitiveness about him was minimal.

Not all was plain sailing for the team, though. They had a single but extremely worrying problem on their hands. It was the behavior of their third member, Rico.

Some time before her deployment to the Gulf, and all throughout the campaign, an odd change had come over Rico. Normally a sunny little girl, she was now quiet and withdrawn. She went for days without saying anything unless spoken to first, and even then she displayed a marked reluctance to talk. She ate little and slept less. Aharon had even noticed her weeping at night, in her painfully light and brief slumbers.

"Something's bothering your friend," Aharon had voiced his concern to Henrietta. "This emotional disturbance will affect her combat performance."

"You're right about Rico being distressed," admitted Henrietta. "She's been like that for a while lately. We've all tried comforting her and coaxing her to tell us her troubles, but she just won't open up. I'm not sure about your second point, though – whatever it is doesn't seem to have affected her combat performance so far. But then again, considering how important this gig is… I'm relegating Rico to backup, and I, too, will be in that capacity so I can keep an eye on her."

"Wise choice," agreed Aharon. "That'll prevent her from jeopardizing the mission and keep her out of trouble until we find a way to help her." After a moment's thought, he continued: "It also means that Meir and I will be in the forefront of things once the bash begins." He parted his thin lips in a mirthless smile and fingered his signature weapon – an Israeli Military Industries Galil ARM – meaningfully. "Excellent. I haven't written anything on this typewriter for months… and I sure do love expressing myself."

Aharon knew better than anyone else that he was a forceful and, at times, insensitive sort, and he also knew that he would probably worsen the situation if he tried to pry anything out of Rico, hence his decision not to approach her about her problem. But he had a suspicion as to what the whole business was about, having noticed Rico looking particularly heartbroken when a song playing on the radio of a passing Coalition Humvee reached her ears.

_Sitting in my room, staring at the wall, I can't believe it's happening_

_Once so wonderful, now, life's a twisted kind of reality, a fantasy_

_Don't know where to begin _

Saw your love for me vanish in a single moment of stupidity

_Nightmare this may be, but it is not a dream, oh_

_I want to scream; a broken heart still bleeds _

Never ever talk, never ever smile

Knowing that my life won't be the same

_Never ever touch, never ever feel_

_I will never hear you call my name... again _

In my dreams I see, see you come to me; a memory of times of old

Waking up, I realize Hell's as cool as ice and the touch of sin did get me in

Nothing burns like the cold

_Never ever talk; never ever smile_

_Knowing that my life won't be the same _

_Never ever touch; never ever feel_

_I will never hear you call my name_

_As we sin, so do we suffer_

_I've fallen from grace, want to turn back time and make it undone _

Never ever talk, never ever smile

Knowing that my life won't be the same

_Never ever touch; never ever feel_

_I will never hear you call my name _

_Never ever talk, never ever smile_

_All I see: a future full of fear _

_Never ever touch; never ever feel_

_I can never whisper in your ear: "I'm sorry..."_

666

D-Day was but a minute old when Henrietta, Rico and Aharon entered the target area, the three children leading a mule laden with two saddlebags. Some distance behind them, their supporting force of two hundred Coalition Special Forces personnel lay hidden, ready and waiting to seal off the locale the moment the operation commenced.

The neighborhood was a scruffy one. A third of the buildings were boarded up and burned-out cars rested on crates beside the curbs. The dominating feature of the vicinity was Abbas' hideout – three long, low buildings and spacious grounds surrounded on four sides by high walls.

The little group entered a particularly isolated and dark alley, where Aharon removed his stripped-down assault rifle from his rucksack, assembling and readying the weapon as Henrietta produced a fully loaded and primed Brugger and Thomet MP9 machine pistol from under her _burqa_. Rico hefted the saddlebags off the mule and sent the animal trotting back the way they came.

"Meir's still out here, watching the compound," said Aharon. "We'll get into position and wait for his go. Being the best-placed of us, he'll spearhead the attack."

"Roger that," replied Henrietta, and the girls parted company with Aharon, who assumed a point behind a dumpster.

Rico's eyes stared inwards on herself. She was as remote and removed as the Celestial Plane. She seemed to be detached from human experience; it was as though she had gone through pain and had come out on the other side. It hurt Henrietta to have to trouble her friend in light of her condition, but she had no choice. Her voice was gentle as she called upon Rico to concentrate on the mission and give it her all.

Rico gave Henrietta a sad little smile and a nod that did much to dispel her friend's doubts. Leaving Henrietta at her position near a cluster of parked motorcycles, Rico entered a derelict building situated a stone's throw away. With her load still slung over her shoulders, she ascended the stairs to the top floor. There, she chose a spot by a window that provided a beautiful view of the compound's only point of egress or ingress – a large gateway in its south wall.

Once by the window, Rico sank to the level of the sill and removed an object from the first sack. It appeared to be a stick, but as she laid it down upon the floor, it gave a metallic clang. Then she drew a bulkier item from the second sack and busied herself in some task that ended with a loud, sharp click, as if some spring or bolt had fallen into place.

Still kneeling upon the floor, she bent forward and threw all her weight and strength upon some lever, with the result that there came a long, whirling, grinding noise, which ended once more in a powerful click. Upon completing her labor, Rico straightened herself, cradling the fruit of her labor – an Objective Sniper Weapon – in her hands.

The Objective Sniper Weapon – OSW for short – is essentially a Barrett M82A1 sniper rifle fitted with a shorter barrel of 25mm caliber, and fires low-velocity explosive shells originally developed for grenade launchers. It is a monstrous gun by anybody's standards, and any hit it scores on a target brings about very obvious – and very dire – results.

The huge weapon's fearsome lines radiated brute force, pure malevolence and utter destructiveness. Rico could almost hear it baying for blood as she rested the behemoth's bipod on the ledge of the open window, primed the weapon, cuddled the butt into her shoulder and turned on the night-vision scope. She knew that its thirst would be quenched today.

The signal the trio had been waiting for then came – a low whisper of "Rock the house" that reverberated through their intercoms. Henrietta and Rico tensed as they watched a diminutive figure dressed from head to toe in black and clutching an Israeli Military Industries Micro-Tavor TAR-21 – the previously unseen fourth member of their team – run over to the five-meter wall of the compound and leap over it in a single bound, followed closely by Aharon.

Nothing happened for a while. Then, gunfire erupted from the compound. The girls' enhanced hearing could make out the distinctive reports of Aharon's Galil and Meir's Tavor, as well as the clatter of numerous al-Qaeda standard-issue weapons – Izhmash AKR Krinkovs, Ceska Zbrojovka vz.61 Scorpions and Izhmekh Makarov PMs. In the span of several seconds, approximately half of the latter three firearm types fell silent, while the Galil and Tavor continued firing in short, sharp bursts. Henrietta and Rico then heard the residual terrorist gunfire slacken and the sound of two motor vehicles starting up.

"We've got our men, but yours gave us the slip by using a flash grenade," hissed Aharon over the intercom. "He's heading for the gate."

"He won't get far," grated Henrietta, "not on my watch. Heads-up, Rico – the enemy are coming our way."

As Henrietta ran for the compound, gun held at hip level, a car burst out of the gateway and halted broadside in the street. It was a beat-up Cadillac sedan, windows open, two shooters sitting Cheyenne-style in the offside windows firing over the top and a third blasting away from the backseat. Flame and smoke issuing from the muzzles of three Krinkovs, bullets skidding off Henrietta's head and body and slamming the air around her. Behind her, auto glass powdered and clanged in the road and a tire exploded as the shots that missed her found their mark on cars parked nearby.

A second vehicle – an old Chevrolet station wagon – appeared behind the Cadillac. Two shooters were sitting up in the windows firing Scorpions across the car roof and the driver was firing a Makarov with his free hand. They were letting rip in the direction of the compound's central building at Aharon and Meir, who did not return fire for fear of hitting the girls' quarry. A fourth man in the backseat had the door open and was pulling Abbas in. Smoke came from both vehicles' back tires and they began to roll.

Fifteen feet was as far as the Cadillac got before Rico took it in her sights and squeezed the trigger. The OSW bucked and roared. Its shell whooshed into the fray like a bolt from the blue, hit the Cadillac fair and square smack in the center of its front grille, sliced its way through steel, penetrated to the car's vitals, exploded and touched off the engine, which, in turn, touched off the fuel tank.

There was a deafening bang and the front of the car disappeared in a huge plume of smoke and flame that looked like a sinister black Christmas tree lit up by hundreds of motes of light. As the dark vapor welled upwards and outwards, bits and pieces of the Cadillac could be seen flying through the air – first a rear-view mirror, then fragments of headlight, then half the bumper. The grand _finale_ came when the entire front right wheel whirled up suddenly, a shade of black darker than the night sky, and sailed musically over three rooftops to fall slowly and heavily into the desert behind.

What remained of the car then skidded and turned turtle, ejecting its horribly burned occupants as it did so. Their dreadful screams rent the air. One of the terrorists, charging around with his clothes on fire, abruptly disappeared as the ammunition he was carrying detonated. The other flaming human forms, rolling madly on the ground, gave quick jerks for two whole minutes as their bandoliers exploded, and then finally lay still.

The driver of the Chevy swerved his mount wildly in a desperate attempt to avoid the burning wreck of the sedan. Although he succeeded, his stunt culminated in the vehicle speeding towards the spot where Henrietta was standing. It was a classic state of 'out of the frying pan and into the fire'.

Henrietta swung with the station wagon as it passed and fired a single round into the side of the driver's head. She pumped two short bursts at the shooters sitting up in the windows and they went over backward in fountains of blood, the slugs having pierced their hearts and punctured their lungs. She dropped the magazine out of the MP9 and slammed another one in before the empty hit the ground, all the time never taking her eyes off the Chevy, which hurtled across the street, sideswiped a line of cars and came to a grinding stop against them.

Henrietta advanced on the Chevy. Empty hands appeared out the back window. Abbas' sole surviving fellow passenger stumbled out, hands above his head, and took to his heels. Henrietta ignored him, focusing instead on Abbas, who lay motionless in the backseat, having being rendered unconscious by the crash. Pulling the rear hatch off its hinges, she dragged the terrorist out. She pocketed Abbas' Makarov and combat knife, removed two poison capsules from the lapels of his shirt to prevent him from taking his own life, slapped a large piece of duct tape over his mouth and firmly flex-cuffed his wrists and ankles together.

A shot rang out from Henrietta's right and the aforementioned escaping terrorist pitched forward on his face with a fatal bullet wound through the throat. He lapsed into ghastly death throes, choking on his own blood. Aharon, who had appeared as if from nowhere, stepped over the dying man, rifle shouldered and smoking sidearm – a Magnum Research Desert Eagle chambered for .50-caliber – in hand. Over his shoulders were the senseless and securely bound forms of the two men whom his team had been after.

"I guess I was wrong about Rico," Aharon said apologetically as he saw what remained of the Cadillac. "She performed admirably. So did you, for that matter. Nice work."

"Right back at you," grinned Henrietta.

Needless to say, the neighborhood descended into an uproar the moment the shooting began. Iraqi civilians ran from all directions; windows were thrown open; the doors of houses were flung aside as their inhabitants poured out. However, these folk were successfully prevented from satisfying their curiosity or getting themselves hurt by the timely arrival of the aforementioned support teams, who herded the crowd back into their homes at gunpoint. A Special Forces armored car arrived at the scene once the firefight had ceased, lingering only long enough for Henrietta and Aharon to load the three captured terrorists into it.

In the confusion, no one noticed Rico leave her post and head for the compound, drawn to it by an inexplicable compulsion. As ethereal as a little wraith, she glided across the grounds, skirting the bodies of eight other terrorists killed by the Israeli operatives. She walked through the doorway of the largest building, entered a room strewn with broken furniture and abruptly came face-to-face with Meir. Carbine slung and Israeli Military Industries Barak SP-21 pistol drawn, he had just finished the act of ensuring that the twentieth and final terrorist was truly dead, and was hunting for souvenirs among the enemy weapons and equipment.

Time seemed to stand still as their eyes met, Meir regarding Rico with curiosity, Rico regarding Meir with a sense of déjà vu. His looks – slim build belying his strength, naturally brown hair worn in a short, boyish cut, fair complexion disguised by a tan, just like hers, and his open, friendly face with its warm brown eyes, which held not a hint of guile or deceit – where had Rico seen them before?

The hippopotamus of her memory wallowed… Then, it finally dawned on Rico who she was looking at. Her face went white and she gave a faint cry. Then she clutched her throat, swayed and fainted for the first time in her life.

It was the most impressive collapse Meir had ever seen. Rico fell backwards slowly, like a tree. There was no sissy sagging of the legs, no cop-out bouncing off a table on the way down. She simply went from vertical to partially horizontal in one marvelous geometric sweep. Meir rushed over and caught her in his arms before she hit the floor.

666

When Rico woke up, she found herself lying on a couch on the second floor of her team's Baghdad bolthole, her eyes staring into Meir's anxious face and her hands in his. The boy's concerned expression melted into a dazzling smile of relief as soon as he saw her rise.

"Thank God you're awake," he exclaimed. "Wow, was I startled when you passed out back there! The expression you had on your face prior to swooning – I thought people only looked that way in the cheesy so-called horror movies Kathryn loves to watch! It looked as though you'd seen a ghost!"

"You can say that again," murmured Rico, in a daze.

"How's that?"

"N- nothing. It's nothing." With a superhuman effort, Rico returned Meir's smile – albeit a trifle crookedly – and squeezed his hand reassuringly. "Please don't worry, I'm perfectly alright - it must have just been the heat. Thanks for fussing over me, anyway."

"You're most welcome, Rico," said Meir, helping her sit upright. "It is 'Rico', isn't it?"

"It sure is."

"Glad to have your acquaintance, Rico. I'm Meir; you may have already heard something of me from Henrietta or Aharon. Just wanted to be certain I got your name right – being away from base for so long and unable to meet you from first go sure is irksome."

"Hey, that's okay… duty comes first, doesn't it?"

"Couldn't have put it better," laughed Meir. He paused for a while, contemplating Rico. "It's an atypical name for a girl, to be sure, but not at all inappropriate. The androgynous beauty of it eventually grows on you, and, like its owner, the name's kind of cute."

"Thanks again," Rico blushed.

Silence reigned for some time before Meir rose to leave. "I think I should go downstairs and tell the others that you're up, or they'll continue to be worried sick." Seeing Rico looking a little reluctant to let him leave, he continued: "Don't you fret, we can talk again afterwards. Now that both our mission and the war are over and done with, we'll have plenty of time on our hands."

"I guess you're right," said Rico. "We could use that time to get to know each other a little bit more, couldn't we?"

"Why, of course! That's something I'm absolutely looking forward to, believe me. See you around, then."

"Bye, Meir," said Rico, a tad breathlessly.

As soon as Meir made his exit, Rico got to her feet. With her teeth clenched, she hurried to her room and flung herself face downwards on her bed, laughing and sobbing in turn. She did not hear the door open inaudibly to admit Henrietta with tea and cakes on a tray, who, when her startled eyes fell on her friend, withdrew swiftly and returned downstairs.

When Henrietta broke it to the others that Rico had apparently flipped, the bewildered Meir wondered: "Was something I said?" But all that the trio found when they ventured upstairs was their teammate sleeping deeply and looking as serene as an angel in Heaven. They left her to catch up on all the rest she had missed, Henrietta thanking an even more astounded Meir for doing whatever he did that led to Rico being seemingly freed of her anguish.

Later that night, it passed Henrietta's mind that 14 April was also the first anniversary of one of Rico's earliest jobs, a mission in which she assassinated a congressman of the Cesare Catholic Radicals at a Rome luxury hotel called the Villa Gatti. But she did not know what both you and I know, dear reader, and dismissed the thought as a useless fact that just happened to pop into her head.

**END OF CHAPTER THREE**


	5. Chapter 4

**CHAPTER FOUR: R & R**

The missions detailed in the preceding three chapters constituted but a fraction of those undertaken by extra-normal junior operatives throughout the Gulf campaign. These maneuvers were extremely significant in that they added much weight and credibility to Coalition commander and United States Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld's revolutionary theory that a small force with the right gear, intelligence and a little luck could, at times, substitute for the brawn of a three thousand-man brigade – small groups of little kids scoured hostile territory much faster and more effectively than multitudes of troops moving in division strength. The combination of their unusual skills with those of more conventional forces gleaned dramatic results, which could only be judged as spellbinding successes.

The missions had also been part of a test conducted by the Social Welfare Agency and Childville to see how well their young wards could operate in the field largely without their supervisors present – a test that the children passed with flying colors. As a reward for effectively completing their labors, the teams were permitted a one-week period of rest prior to their trip home, Childville having fulfilled its objective of tracking down al-Qaeda's point men in Iraq and the Social Welfare Agency having pocketed its fee.

At present, the bulk of the operatives and their supervisors were resting behind the lines of a Coalition military outpost in Mosul, this locale being where their final mission took place. The mission in question was the last of eight stints with the 75th Exploitation Task Force – a team of Coalition scientists, technicians and special operators established to search for weapons of mass destruction. Our young heroes and heroines were used as WMD 'sniffer dogs' – the benefit of having operatives with ultra-keen senses and immunity to harmful substances like germs, gas or radiation was certainly not lost on the Coalition.

The hunt for Iraq's cache produced nothing substantial in the first post-war month. The superhuman hit-kids traveled from suspected site to suspected site – including the infamous Osiraq nuclear reactor facility and al-Tuwitha bio-weapons research compound – without finding anything significant. On the other hand, they uncovered oodles of grisly evidence of the regime's cruelty toward its own people – mass graves and hidden torture chambers, among many other horrific things – and this realization seriously weakened the position of those parties who had deplored the launch of a war that was seen as an act of belligerence.

"In my opinion, only time will tell whether or not the invasion of Iraq is a case of the end justifying the means," Claes penned the final lines of the latest entry in her war diary as she lay in her hammock under the star-spangled firmament that hung over the aforesaid outpost. "It certainly is a constructive _aide memoire_ to small-sate dictators that there are limits to their tyranny, and I hope that it might be a step towards a resolution of other issues, such as the Palestinian dilemma."

Closing the book, she gracefully rolled off the canvas sheet and strolled away into the gloom. She passed the tents where the children's supervisors were slumbering, outside which the flint-featured Elsa steadfastly stood guard. Ascending a small hillock, Claes paused to savor both the feel of the night breeze and the spectacular view of Mosul that this elevated position offered.

Mosul was a ruined city, but it was ruined in a fantastically impressive way. Claes saw a radio mast that had been blasted to a pile of twisted metal, its jagged ends tangled skyward; but the surrounding homes were untouched. She observed target after target that had been taken out specifically. It was extraordinary. Here was physical evidence of the highly precise nature of the Coalitions aerial blitz on Iraq's metropolises.

After making a mental note to immortalize such scenes in photographs before her contingent went home, Claes descended the knoll and walked on, her ultimate destination being a cluster of abandoned Iraqi fortifications where her other comrades were hanging out. Before long, she reached the area and spotted one of her friends. Angelica was sitting out in the open on a spent howitzer shell and was busy writing her name on every item in her ammunition stock.

"You know what they say about there being ordnance with your name on it?" said Angelica when an amazed Claes asked her what she was doing. "Well, I figured that the items in question would never hit me if I own them, 'cause the chances of me shooting myself are very small indeed."

It was moments like this that made Claes realize how much of a beloved little sister Angelica was to her and the others. "Silly dear," smiled the bespectacled girl, giving her friend an affectionate pat on the back before entering a bunker where Liesel was painting a picture, her labor being closely watched over by Triela.

"How's 'art's greatest moment since the time Mona Lisa sat down and told Leonardo Da Vinci she was in a slightly odd mood' getting along?" asked Claes.

"It'll be done any minute now," replied Liesel, delicately moving her paint-coated brush over the canvas.

"That subtle shading certainly is glorious," commended Claes as she observed Liesel work.

"It's Aharon you ought to credit, not me," said Liesel. "He taught me the technique." Liesel had momentarily stopped painting now, and she looked deeply lost in thought. "After this tour in Iraq, I now know quite a lot that I didn't use to know – this painting method being a prime example. It's amazing what you do end up knowing, I sometimes think. I often wonder what new stuff I'll know."

"Well, you never know."

"Yeah… I know."

Liesel blinked, snapped out of her reverie and finished the job with three deft brush-strokes. She then stood back to allow Claes and Triela to admire the completed masterpiece. Claes wore a mystified expression, while Triela rocked with silent glee.

"What does it mean?" asked Claes.

"The concept came from me, actually," said Triela. "The painting's called 'Bush In Iraq', and it's meant to commemorate the visit that President Bush paid on the Coalition forces in-country yesterday."

"In the painting, I see Mrs. Bush locked in a passionate embrace with Vice-President Cheney on a desk in the Oval Office… but where is Bush?"

Triela snickered. "He's in Iraq."

Claes could not help but let her normally stoic and cool image drop. By the time she left the bunker, from which hysterical laughter still emanated, her stomach was aching from paroxysms of mirth. With some difficulty, she stumbled towards the tent where Aharon was watching television and Henrietta was knitting a pullover for Giuseppe. Just as she reached it, fireworks erupted overhead – the inhabitants of Mosul were celebrating their liberation from the cruelty of the Saddam regime.

"You're going moldy," commented Henrietta upon seeing Claes' form framed in the doorway and illuminated by the green light of the fireworks.

"No, I'm cultivating penicillin," replied Claes, slumping in a corner. "God, I need a drink."

Aharon wordlessly handed Claes a glassful of beverage akin to the one he was slurping. Claes did not reach out to take the drink – she simply stared at it in horrified amazement.

It was a big drink – no, make that a very big and a very long drink. It was one of those special concoctions where each very sticky, very strong ingredient is poured in very slowly, so that they layer on top of one another. Drinks like this tend to be called 'Traffic Lights' or 'Rainbow's Revenge' or, in places where truth is more highly valued, 'Hello And Goodbye, Mr. Brain Cell'.

In addition, this drink had some lettuce floating in it. And a slice of lemon _and _a piece of pineapple hooked coquettishly on the side of the glass, which had sugar frosted round the rim. There were _two_ paper umbrellas, one pink and one blue, and they each had a cherry on the end.

And someone had taken the trouble to freeze the ice cubes into the shape of little elephants. After that, there's no hope. One might as well be drinking in a place called The Cococobana.

"I'll... I'll have a warm milk, thank you," stammered Claes after regaining her composure.

"Suit yourself," shrugged Aharon, pointing in the direction of a small paraffin stove and the fridge in which the milk was stored, before going back to watching MTV.

"Have you seen Rico?" Claes asked Henrietta as she sipped her replacement drink.

"Out with her new bosom buddy," was the reply. "Let's leave those two be – Meir's wonderful company, and giving them some privacy will be the least we can do to show him our appreciation for curing Rico's depression, however he did it. Besides, they _do_ make a sweet couple…"

"Well spoken," smiled Claes, "and absolutely correct."

666

"A child's been born in Bethlehem," chuckled Meir as he pointed to a particularly large and brilliant firework that erupted overhead. 

"Triplets," laughed Rico as two more followed in quick succession.

Earlier in the evening, Meir had sat spellbound as Rico gave him an exclusive and enthralling performance on her violin, coaxing heart-stirring melodies from the instrument with her dexterous little hands. Now, the pair reclined under the night sky on a wind-swept hillside some distance away from the fortifications complex and watched the breathtaking firework display. It was an explosion of vibrant color in the same way a cluster bomb explodes, each falling bomblet exploding again.

The duo lingered long after the pyrotechnics came to a close, happily talking about everything and nothing - particularly what they dreamed, wanted and thought. Eventually it was time for them to go back. Meir took Rico's hand in his, and together they walked off through the shifting desert sand, homeward bound.

The two friends' enhanced hearing picked up the faraway sound of music emanating from Aharon's tent, and a warm, fuzzy feeling came over Rico as she comtemplated the song.

_Three o'clock in the morning_

_You're still here with me_

_We left a trail of destruction_

_But now after all _

_I've put you through_

_I'm starting to see_

_A world without you_

_Means nothing to me_

_Home_

_I just want to take you home_

_I don't want to be alone_

_And I can't believe you're standing here with me_

_Time_

_It took me a little time_

_How could I have been so blind?_

_And I can't believe you're _

_Standing here with me_

_I was looking for blue skies_

_Wrapped up in my own sweet world_

_But all I found were dark clouds_

_But now that you've _

_Blown them all away_

_It's suddenly clear,_

_I need still need you to _

_Kiss away the tears_

_Home_

_I just want to take you home_

_I don't want to be alone_

_And I can't believe you're standing here with me_

_Time_

_It took me a little time_

_How could I have been so blind?_

_And I can't believe you're _

_Standing here with me_

_Here with me_

_Stay here with me_

_I need you here with me_

_I need you here with me_

_Home_

_I just want to take you home_

_I don't want to be alone_

_And I can't believe you're standing here with me_

_Time_

_It took me a little time_

_How could I have been so blind?_

_And I can't believe you're _

_Standing here with me_

_Three o'clock in the morning_

_You're still here with me..._

**END OF CHAPTER FOUR**


	6. Epilogue

**EPILOGUE: MEMORIAL**

At time of writing, a large stone still lies on the Mosul hillside. It has RICO carved deep into one side of its gray surface and MEIR beneath, the first name being formed by bullets fired from a Ceska Zbrojovka CZ75 and the second by those fired from an Israeli Military Industries Barak SP-21. Etched deep into its other side with either bayonets or combat knives in two distinct styles of childlike hand printing are the lyrics to the A-Teens' _Halfway 'Round The World_.

The spot is visited often by the stars, by happy people and by lonely ones, who are still hovering and hunting like the carrion crows.

**END OF EPILOGUE**

**-FIN-**


End file.
